Brooke Astor's Maine Estate Now Belongs to Her Son's Wife

By MIKE McINTIRE; Polly Saltonstall contributed reporting for this article.

Published: July 29, 2006

Three years ago, as Brooke Astor began scaling back her public life, she quietly gave title to her beloved vacation estate on the Maine coast, worth millions of dollars, to her son, Anthony D. Marshall, according to local land records.

The transaction went mostly unnoticed in Northeast Harbor, an exclusive oceanfront enclave where it would not be unusual for a wealthy landowner to pass property to an heir. But what happened next came as a surprise to friends of Mrs. Astor when they learned of it yesterday: Mr. Marshall transferred ownership of the entire estate to his wife, Charlene.

Yesterday, Ken Warner, a lawyer for Mr. Marshall, said that Mrs. Astor had long planned to give the Maine property to him, her only child. They had visited Maine frequently since the 1960's, and Mr. Warner, in an e-mail message, said that Mrs. Astor had told her son the gift of the property was ''because you love Maine as much as I do.''

''The date of the actual gift, on which Mrs. Astor paid gift tax, was the wedding anniversary of Mr. Marshall and his wife, Charlene,'' Mr. Warner said. He said Mr. Marshall subsequently decided to give the property to his wife because ''he loves her and he wanted her to have it always.''

The series of land transfers, carried out between May and November 2003, left Mrs. Astor with nothing in Northeast Harbor except memories of a bygone era, when she was a glamorous and charitable presence there. It also adds an intriguing twist to the legal drama unfolding in New York, where Mr. Marshall's control over his mother's care is being challenged in court by his own son, Philip Marshall.

Mrs. Astor, who is 104, once talked to Philip Marshall and his wife about her plans to leave them part of the Maine estate after she died, according to two people close to the Astor and Marshall families. But that seems unlikely now that the property is owned by Charlene Marshall, whose children from a prior marriage have sometimes used it in recent years, according to Alicia Johnson, Mrs. Astor's head housekeeper there for 12 years before being laid off in 2004.

Even before she lost her job, Ms. Johnson said, Anthony and Charlene Marshall had cut back on the staff and complained that money was tight. ''I used to have four or five girls helping me,'' she said, adding that the Marshalls ''said they were broke and couldn't afford it and they put me down to two people.'' Mrs. Astor last visited Maine in 2002, she said.

Revelations about the real estate maneuverings came as old friends and acquaintances of Mrs. Astor from Manhattan to Maine continued to grapple with unsettling details of the intrafamily squabble that spilled out this week in court papers filed by Philip Marshall. He claims that his father has enriched himself at Mrs. Astor's expense while denying her medicines, proper clothing and other necessities, and he has asked a judge to appoint as her guardian Annette de la Renta, the wife of the designer Oscar de la Renta and a close friend of Mrs. Astor.

Anthony Marshall, 82, has denied the charges, insisting that he directs expenditures of more than $2.5 million a year for her care. He said he loved his mother and was shocked by the allegations being made against him. On Thursday night, Mr. Marshall and his wife walked from their Upper East Side apartment to Lenox Hill Hospital to visit Mrs. Astor, who had been taken there within the past week .

Mrs. Astor remained at the hospital yesterday and was in stable condition, said Fraser Seitel, a spokesman for Mrs. de la Renta.

The former Astor compound in Northeast Harbor, known in the area as Cove's End, is roughly seven acres and is made up of a main house, several cottages, a swimming pool and a garden.

While not directly on the water, it has water views, and local real estate agents estimated it could fetch more than $5 million if put on the market. Mrs. Astor became the sole owner after her husband, Vincent Astor, died in 1959.

Over the years, Mrs. Astor, famous for giving millions to charity and cultural institutions in New York, extended her philanthropy to Maine as well, one of the few areas outside New York City that she considered worthy of support from the foundation she ran until 2002. In 1998, for instance, she gave $60,000 to the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor to support its library.

She is an honorary trustee at the Northeast Harbor Library, where there is an Astor Room for children that was created by a grant from Mrs. Astor. In 1997, she gave the library $100,000 to finance educational programs for schoolchildren in the community, said Anna C. Carr, the library's associate director.

Townspeople said that Mrs. Astor was well liked in Northeast Harbor, where, like many a sought-after vacation spot, there can be occasional friction between full-time residents and seasonal visitors -- something Mrs. Astor always avoided.

''She made no distinction between the summer and year-round communities,'' Ms. Carr said. ''She always treated both the same way.''

While Mrs. Astor has enjoyed the affection of a grateful townsfolk, her daughter-in-law, Charlene Marshall, 61, has had a more complex relationship with Northeast Harbor, where she once lived.

Residents there recall how she left her husband, an Episcopal minister at a local church, to become involved with Mr. Marshall in 1992. As Nan Lincoln, the arts editor of the weekly Bar Harbor Times, said this week, ''It was no small scandal, when she ran off.''

Ms. Johnson, the former housekeeper, said that Mrs. Astor had commented to members of her staff over the years that she felt guilty about the circumstances of her son's marriage, and had made donations to the church where her daughter-in-law's former husband once presided. He eventually left town.

The transfer of Mrs. Astor's Maine assets to her son occurred not long after she closed down the Vincent Astor Foundation in December 2002. She has said that she decided in 1997 to wind up the foundation because of her advancing age, after having given away almost $195 million to charity.

The Maine real estate was actually a collection of different-sized parcels that were bundled together and transferred as ''a free and unconditional gift'' to Anthony Marshall on May 7, 2003, according to a copy of the deed on file at the Hancock County government offices. It was signed, in shaky handwriting, by ''Brooke Russell Astor.'' The gift tax imposed on the transfer was considerably less than the estate tax would have been had the property been passed on after her death.

Six months later, Mr. Marshall transferred the same parcels to his wife, who is now the sole owner.

The transfer, coupled with the recent legal fight, makes it unlikely that Philip Marshall will ever wind up with the guest house that Mrs. Astor once talked of leaving to him.

Mr. Seitel, who in addition to speaking for Mrs. de la Renta is also serving as a spokesman for Philip Marshall, declined to comment yesterday when asked about the future of the guest house. Mr. Warner said he ''had no information'' about it.

Photo: Charlene and Anthony D. Marshall at Brooke Astor's 100th birthday party at the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., in March 2002. (Photo by Bill Cunningham/The New York Times)(pg. B4)